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Cycling Gives Wyn The Chance To Enjoy An Active Lifestyle After Limb Loss

After having his leg amputated, Wyn Jenkins wanted to get back into sport. “Cycling seemed the best option,” he said. “It had a massive impact, both on my wife and the rest of my family.”

63-year-old Wyn now chairs an amputee cycling club, regularly riding distances of 100 miles and even climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

He had always enjoyed an active lifestyle, playing professional rugby in Australia before retiring from the sport in 1982.

Sadly, Wyn was diagnosed with early onset osteoarthritis in the mid-1980s, undergoing a series of major surgical procedures between 1992 and 2003. In 2005 he had a knee replacement, but the surgery caused the knee to lock.

After further surgery Wyn developed a preventable infection. Despite more operations and intensive physiotherapy, doctors weren’t able to save Wyn’s leg and it was amputated above the knee a month later.

Irwin Mitchell helped Wyn and his family with a legal claim for a settlement that allowed them to move into a specially adapted bungalow, as well as paying for state of the art prosthetic legs to improve his quality of life.

Wyn also contacted the Douglas Bader Foundation, a charity set up to help those who have lost limbs.

“I began looking on the internet to find out more about living with limb loss and was relieved when I came across the Douglas Bader Foundation. I learnt that the best people to help you through the first difficult years after amputation were amputees,” Wyn said.

Wyn’s now an ambassador for the Douglas Bader Foundation. In June 2015, he cycled the 105 mile Merlin Sportive as part of Team Bader, along with two other amputee cyclists and someone who was paralysed on the left side of their body – the ride had almost 10,000 feet of climbing – the equivalent of 10 Eiffel Towers stacked on top of each other.

“Cycling is liberating. Once you get on the bike, you feel completely normal. And I can do it with my wife, I can do it with all my clubmates and no one makes allowances for me and I love that.”